Southern says sorry 38,000 times a year

Southern rail’s Twitter account says sorry more than 100 times a day and at least 38,000 times in the past year.

Website ‘Sorry for the Inconvenience’ logs every time that train operating companies apologise to customers on the social media site.

Omid Kashan, who created the Sorry for the Inconvenience website (photo submitted). SUS-161215-135646001

Passengers have endured a miserable time using Southern services run by rail operator Govia Thameslink Railway throughout 2016 due to a mixture of staff shortages, Network Rail track issues, management problems, and industrial action.

Omid Kashan, 26, who lives in Manchester and works in graphic design and web development, explained he had the idea for Sorry for the Inconvenience while waiting for a Metrolink tram.

He said: “It struck me that it would be interesting to try and quantify the amount of times the company was saying sorry.

“As soon as it went up people were asking for Northern to be added, and then London operators and so on.”

According to the site Southern has said sorry 38,737 times in the last year and averages 110 apologies a day on Twitter.

Train drivers’ union ASLEF started a 48-hour strike on Tuesday, leading to the complete shutdown of the Southern network, with another walkout scheduled tomorrow (Friday December 16).

The dispute is over GTR’s plans to introduce driver-only operation on Southern services, which would mean drivers are responsible for opening and closing train doors.

The RMT union has already held 11 strikes as conductors will be moved to the roles of on-board supervisors.